SEO strategy – helping your customers find your business

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of shining a spotlight on an otherwise invisible website. Our SEO consultants do more than effective SEO. We do effective website marketing, and SEO is one incredibly useful method.
We begin by assuming that your goal is to make a profit or promote a cause, not to be able to say "We are the top ranked site for whatever." Our preoccupation with your bottom line begins in selecting the search terms to work on, so that you are targeting real and reachable customers who are ready to spend. We then work to build your rankings, so that customers will find your website rather than your competitors' websites. Finally, we make sure that your landing pages - the pages that rank high in the search engines. This is a major oversight of many SEO consultants, who are focused just on what happens at Google or Yahoo or MSN, but do not take a direct interest in your sales process.
Nurture the search engines, and they will nurture you. Feed them information you would want your visitors to read, and that's what they will feed your visitors."
You don't need to hire a local SEO consultant; you do need to hire the best. We operate using the following optimization principles:
• Follow the letter and the spirit of the search engines' guidelines, to avoid placing our clients in current or future trouble.
• Focus on the visitors, both humans and robots, when optimizing a website.
• Rankings are not good enough - the listing has to sell and the page has to deliver.
• We are not coders. We are strategists who use coding and other techniques to market your business and your website.
• Non-reciprocal links are more valuable than reciprocal links.
• More is not necessarily better. Optimal is better (that's what it means to "optimize").
• Trust is a valuable commodity. Don't make false promises to clients.
• Never work for two clients targeting the same search terms (avoid conflict of interest).
• We don't do "crash 'n' burn" SEO. If that's what you are looking for, there are plenty of unethical SEO consultants who do.
Amazingly, many professional search engine optimizers are coders who think of themselves as coders. We are strategists, who think of ourselves as website marketers. We use coding as a tool to get our message across, but it is only one tool at our disposal.

SEM and the long tail

The long tail is an important concept that describes how markets and culture are developing now that an enormous range of choice is available to consumers via the world wide web. The long tail was popularised by Chris Anderson of Wired Magazine, and has since become a major topic of discussion in the world of online e-commerce.

Choice
Imagine walking into your local bookshop, to be confronted with a vast array of shelves containing every item that has ever been published, from the works Shakespeare to local newspapers such as the London Paper and the London Lite.
In the real world this is impossible, but in the online world such a degree of choice is available. Websites such as Amazon provide an immense variety of books that classical 'bricks and mortar' bookshops can only dream about. This phenomenon is replicated in the world of music and video by websites such as iTunes and Netflix.

What Does the long tail mean?
If you graphed the sales of all the products available online, starting with the bestsellers and moving down to the low-sellers, you would see that a small number of products at the left of the graph sell very well, but as you move to the right, the line dips down until sales begin to approach zero.
This graph is known as a long-tailed graph, because while the number of products selling well (the Head) is very short, the graph of all the products selling in small quantities is very, very long. This is the Long Tail: and what is happening in this part of the graph is remarkable.

Binning the traditional Pareto approach
In the classic 'bricks and mortar' shopping environment, the focus has always been on high-selling items: the hits, the bestsellers and the blockbusters. The prevailing law known as the Pareto effect or Pareto’s law has been that 80% of all the profits arise from just 20% of the goods available - the so-called '80/20 Rule'. Poor-selling goods are too costly to store and are therefore ruthlessly purged from the shelves.
The reason for this is pure economics. Low-selling products take up expensive shelf-space and can quickly become unprofitable unless they sell in large numbers. The result for consumers is very limited choice, blandness and lowest-common-denominator offerings that appeal to a broad mass of people, but are not suited for the unique tastes and preferences of each individual.

The emerging importance of the long tail
In the online world however, it is possible to offer up a vast array of products even if they sell in very small numbers. Customers can use powerful search tools to sift through this vast range in order to find exactly what they are looking for. What happens is that when a wide choice of products is available, consumers gravitate away from the Head down into the Tail. They seek out products that are more customised to their own individual needs. A thriving market develops for niche items that would never have been apparent in marketplaces rooted in the real world. This movement away from the Head looks set to increase over the coming years.
As customers are migrating towards the tail, small online producers avail of minimal distribution costs to sell their products, so the Long Tail is getting longer as well as fatter. The total market in the Tail is becoming much larger than in the past. Not only is it large, but very profitable too.

The Age of the Niche
With the Internet and the development of the Long Tail, the age of the niche has arrived. This points to a longer-term fragmentation of society, where people are defined less by their geography than by their interests and values. Authority figures have limited impact, news media has less influence, micro-celebrities become more prevalent and mass-advertising becomes less effective. Good or bad, the Long Tail idea gives us an insight into the way the world is beginning to change.

The long tail and search engine marketing / SEO and PPC
Understanding the importance of the long tail impacts on search engine marketing in 2 key areas

1) Keyword research;Keywords that may have been ignored as being too niche are now being looked at as an increasingly important part of any keyword strategy. Ongoing keyword research is esential for sustainable SEO
2) On page optimisation;On page content must reflect this research and be built into your websites content in a user friendly way

Source: BBC
Author: 4Ps Marketing London

Introduction to Search Engine Marketing

Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is probably not well known outside of those in the industry unlike traditional form of advertising. Mention TV commercial or Billboards and you would be hard press to find someone that does not know what they are.

Search Engine Marketing is basically online advertising on search engines for example, Google, Yahoo, MSN and etc. The advertisment from search engine marketing is seen by many, but not many of them will end up clicking on the links.

Here is an example of Search Engine Marketing Ads on Google.


Search Engine Marketing Advertisment will appear either on top of your organic search results or on the right hand side of the page. Does look a bit familiar now doesn't it? The fact is, all of us have "selected viewing" habits. When we are focusing on any activity, our brain tend to filter out information that is not relevant our purpose. Don't believe me? Try this little experiement.


Why is Search Engine Marketing so different from traditional media like TV commercials or posters? The answer lies in the user behaviour. When users are watching TV or walking around on the streets, they are in a "laid back" mode which can be visualize as the user leaning back on his couch and watching TV. This means that they are not actively looking for information. However, when a user is using a search engine, they are in a "lean forward" mode which can be visualized as the user leaning forward when surfing the internet. It means that they are actively searching for information about a particular product or service. When users are in a "lean forward" mode, they are more receptive towards the information displayed on their screen.

Search Engine Marketing is targetting towards such "lean forward" mode. When users are looking for a particular product that you are selling and the ads appear on the search result page, there is a higher chance that they might click on your ads and convert. A conversion could be a "Contact Us" page or a purchase, something that the advertiser has defined as a useful goal to them.
The question now is, should you be advertising with Search Engine Marketing? Is Search Engine Marketing for everyone?What are the criterias for doing Search Engine Marketing?

Let me try to touch on those questions. Firstly, what are the requirements before you can start advertising with Google or any other search engines? The requirements are simple, you simply need to have a working website and the means to pay the media owner, which in this case, simply means Google or any search engine that you wish to advertise on.

Before you jump on the bandwagon of Search Engine Marketing, here are some checklist to decide if you should actually advertise with Search Engine Marketing.

• Do you have a specific goal in mind? Search Engine Marketing efforts would be better off if the advertiser has a clear view of what they want to accomplise.
• Do you have a relevant page for your goal? Search Engine Marketing may be to drive traffic to your site, but if there are no relevant page in relation to your goals, you are just wasting your advertising money.

However, if you are still unsure if Search Engine Marketing is for you, we provide free consultation. Why wait? Click Here to contact us now!

Off page optimization

Add your website into major local search engines.

This will help a lot in terms of driving traffic to your site, as local people are likely to be more interested with your business. So first do a little research about which sites are the most commonly used search engines in your location. If you can't find any specific popular site that people use, you have to use some brand search engines, like Google, Yahoo, Ask, etc. They all have some similar sections with which you can submit your business, address, phone number and so on.

Add your website into industry specific directories.

Try to search for your relevant business directory and industry directory. For example, I would search “Singapore online business directory” and “SEO company directory” for this website. Make sure to record the directories you added your site to and the usernames and passwords you use. Don’t use the same user name and password although it’s easier to remember and maintain, because it’s not safe. Internet security is always a factor that many people worry about when they do SEO.

Build more links from any possible relevant websites.

Links can be from your partners, your customers, even your competitors. Analysis what links that your competitors have got, you can use the list of link sources you generated from Yahoo Site Explorer. Later try to acquire links from those online resources that they introduced to you. Remember always use the keywords in the anchor text of that link. Do something offline to find link resources. Links online suggests your public relationship somehow. You can also make use of social network. Facebook, LinkedIn are the explorers of this area.

Create and maintain your sitemaps

Create a sitemap page and remember to update it when you have new content added. To create a sitemap page is easy to do but to create a XML sitemap may need some technical support. After creating the xml sitemap, logon to Google Webmaster and submit it. Of course you need to be verified first before you can login.


This article is the continue part three of Checklist for Doing SEO. You may also want to read part two of this topic: On Page Optimization.

On page optimization - (Checklist for Doing SEO Part Two)

This article is the continue part two of Checklist for Doing SEO
Make use of online traffic analysis tool.
Sign up the webmaster tools like Google Analytics, Google Webmaster Tools, and Live Search Webmaster Center. These tools will give you sufficient information about your site which could help you to do a good SEO job. Let Google Analytics gather some traffic data as a bench mark before you start your SEO work. Don't forget about history. It can point out the right direction to you.
Evaluate the visual design of your client's site.
If the site is too scary for people to browse, do SEO for it will become a waste of time. A good designer will bring you into the door of success.
Check compatibility of site between different browsers and operating systems.
Visit your client's site using different web browser. The most popular browsers are as follow: Internet Explorer (IE) version 6.0, IE 7.0, Mozilla Firefox, Safari and the Google Chrome. And the operating system that a visitor may use is normally either Windows or Macintosh. Although Linux become more popular than before, there's still few people use it.
Add a robots.txt in your domain root folder.
It allows you to specify exactly which pages search engines can crawl and it makes search engines easier to index your site because they always download the file before navigating through pages of your site. Having a robots.txt makes your website search engine friendly because it's like saying hello to those crawlers.
Have one copy of brief introduction of website in hand.
This is for the link building directory submissions.
Analyze the HTML code and optimize all of the SEO related Meta tags.
The following Meta tags are very important:

1. Title tags
2. Meta keywords tags
3. Meta description tags
4. H1 tags

Optimize URL architecture.
Link your pages with each other is very important. Don't leave any single page hanging alone.
Optimize your images
On relevant images include keywords in alt tags in their file names.
Navigation analysis
Add navigation links at the bottom of every page if your main navigation links are in flash or none-friendly JavaScript navigation menu. This will help the spiders crawl from one page to another and complete the indexing of the whole site more fluently.

Checklist for Doing SEO - (Part One)

Before you do any SEO, you need to research some factors and find out the part need to be changed. Many people believe the following checklist gives the most important steps in the SEO process.

• Go through the basic knowledge of web development.
  
• Write down your target. Ask yourself: Why are you doing SEO? Why do you want people to find your site?
  
• Brainstorm and write down possible search queries that people may interested with your site. Ask yourself: What words might people type into the search engines to look information that your website can provide? For example, I came up with “Story of Zeus”, "greek mythology" for a website talking about stories.
  
• Research your chosen keywords. Sign up for Google Adwords and learn how to use the provided “keyword tool” and “ad text ideas” generator. Learn how to use Wordtracker (paid) and some other SEO Tools (free).
• Using what you got from keyword research, record what you believe to be the best keywords for SEO.
• Analyze the current Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) for your keywords. Gather information about: Who is ranking high in SEO result? What are their advantage and disadvantage? Investigate and get to know your competition.
• Create a list of your competition. This is also to set your target. You will be more clear to know what you should once you have set your competitors.
• Use some link analysis tool like Yahoo Site Explorer to find the sources of your competitor's links.
• Search for your site in search engines to figure out whether it's been indexed. Use the site command on Google, Live and Yahoo “site:www.yoursite.com” If your client's site is not indexed, you need to figure out what is preventing the search engines from crawling it. Google's Webmaster tool can be a good helper for this step.

On page optimization will be the part two of this topic.